An absorbent article such as a disposable pants-type diaper is formed of multiple sheets, including a liquid-permeable topsheet or second sheet, which is permeable to liquid, a liquid-impermeable waterproof sheet, and a backsheet; and an absorber. In the manufacturing processes of such absorbent articles, a cutting and transferring apparatus is used to form a strip-shaped sheet by cutting a continuous body of sheets substantially horizontally transported, and to dispose (referred to as “transfer”) the strip-shaped sheet thus cut onto another sheet (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
The cutting and transferring apparatus includes: a blade roll which is configured to rotate along a machine direction; and a transfer roll which faces the blade roll with a continuous body of second sheets conveyed substantially horizontally, and is configured to rotate along the machine direction. The blade roll has a blade protruding from an outer peripheral surface of the blade roll. The transfer roll has an anvil protruding from an outer peripheral surface of the transfer roll and being configured to come into contact with the blade.
The blade roll and the transfer roll rotate at circumferential speeds which are substantially the same as each other and are faster than a conveyance speed of the second-sheet continuous body conveyed in the machine direction (MD) along the flow of the manufacturing processes. With this configuration, when the second-sheet continuous body is pinched between the blade of the blade roll and the anvil of the transfer roll, the second-sheet continuous body is pulled in the machine direction, and is cut (press-cut) along a cross direction (CD) which is orthogonal to the machine direction. The strip-shaped second sheet thus formed by the cutting is disposed on a top sheet continuous body.
In the press cutting, if the thickness of a continuous body to be cut is increased, there arise a problem of coarsening the cut surface and a problem of difficulty in cutting, in general. In this regard, there has been a demand for a cutting method capable of securely cutting a continuous body even if the thickness of the continuous body is increased. As a method for cutting a continuous body conveyed substantially horizontally, there is shear cutting besides the press cutting.
The shear cutting is performed as follows. A continuous body is fed into between a bed knife and a blade roll. The bed knife is fixed in parallel with and along the entire width of the continuous body in the cross direction, and the blade roll has a blade formed in an outer peripheral surface of the blade roll. Then, the blade is pressed against the bed knife with the continuous body interposed therebetween. Subsequently, the blade is rotated in a direction crossing the plane (surface) of the continuous body to move across the continuous body, thereby cutting the continuous body existing between the blade and the bed knife.
However, it is difficult to employ the shear cutting in the cutting and transferring apparatus described in Patent Literature 1. In the shear cutting, it is impossible to keep holding the continuous body from immediately before the cutting of the continuous body to immediately after the cutting, unlike the press cutting described in Patent Literature 1.
For this reason, what is required is a mechanism (for example, a transfer roll) which is disposed downstream of the bed knife in the machine direction, and which is configured to receive a cut strip-shaped sheet and send to the downstream side as well as to receive the leading edge portion of the continuous body having the cut surface. However, since the receiving mechanism cannot be disposed on the trajectory of the blade near the bed knife, a space is inevitably formed between the bed knife and the receiving mechanism disposed downstream of the bed knife.
A mechanism to convey the continuous body while supporting the leading edge portion of the continuous body cannot be provided between the bed knife and the receiving mechanism. For this reason, the conveyance of the continuous body inevitably depends on the rigidity of the continuous body until the leading edge portion of the continuous body is received by the receiving mechanism.
However, the second-sheet continuous body used in Patent Literature 1 is formed of a soft material. For this reason, it can be considered that the twisting or riding up of the continuous body, that is, defects such as crease and bending are likely to occur before the leading edge portion of the cut continuous body reaches the receiving mechanism.